As a manager, I'm stuck in my remote role
I have been a CTO for a while at an SMB (leading 60-ish engineers), working exclusively remotely. I think I am doing a good job, but I am worried about my career. I am trying to do my very best when it comes to managing people and leading the team - giving people the right balance of autonomy, direction, technical and other leadership, and so on. Every day I try to focus on my team as selflessly as I can, focusing on their performance and growth, guiding their careers in the company, and so on. As far as I can tell, everyone regards me as a great people manager and technical lead too. However, I'm really bad in promoting myself, I am not an extrovert, I don't have a blog, don't speak at conferences, and as a consequence of remote work, I rarely meet my peer group. I am often panicking that in case I'd like to or need to switch, I would not be able to prove my worth to anyone.
How can I escape this?
i think you need to code a little every day. Git pull from a repo your reports are working on and just read the commits at first. But make it a goal to get small PRs merged in. That'll get you back in the swing of constantly adding value and talking to people on stuff that matters.